TEN INDIAN CLASSICS: Selections from ‘Selected Ghazals and Other Poems’ by Mir Taqi Mir

Extract: Mir’s poetry abounds in bawdiness, the pain and enjoyment of life, instances of homosexuality, Sufi themes, close and wise observation of the world, and insistence on man’s dignity.

- Mir Taqi Mir / Translated from Urdu by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi

The following is an extract from Ten Indian Classics (Harvard University Press, 2025), a collection that showcases 2500 years of India’s dazzling literary tradition, translated from a wide range of classical languages, and with an introduction by poet Ranjit Hoskote. Romantic ghazals and devotional quatrains, medieval battles and separated lovers, Buddhist women on their journeys toward nirvana (some of the earliest recorded women’s writings in the world), and Ram’s battle against a demon army to rescue Sita―all this and more are here in this anthology.  

Muhammad Taqi, who later earned lasting renown as the great Urdu poet Mir Taqi Mir, or Muhammad Taqi Mir—or just Mir—was born in Agra (better known at that time as Akbarabad) in September 1723. He died in Lucknow on September 10, 1810.(1) He compiled his first poetry collection (divan) some time in the early 1750s, certainly before 1752. He wrote both Persian and Urdu poetry and was prolific in all the popular genres. His Kulliyāt (Collected Poems) was published by the College of Fort William in 1811, setting perhaps the final seal of authority on his position as the major poet of the time. 

In Urdu love poetry of the eighteenth century, both the speaker and beloved were a notion or ideal, as in the poetic conventions of the popular Persian ghazals in the sabk-e hindi, or “Indian style”, freed from the demands of “reality”. Ghazals were intended for recitation and their key theme was love. The core function of love was to soften the heart, to make it receptive to more pain, which ultimately made the human heart receptive to the divine light. Pain, and things that caused pain, had a positive value. The lover’s place was to suffer; the beloved’s function was to inflict suffering. This was a Sufi formulation, but it was regularly taken by the ghazal poet to be true in the ghazal universe. 

The world of the ghazal is one where the outsider is the hero, where nonconformism is the creed, and where prosperity is poverty. 

The lover-protagonist and the beloved-object both live in a world of extremes: supreme beauty, supreme cruelty, supreme devotion—all things are at their best, or worst, in this world. It reverberates throughout with the terror and the ecstasy of dying. Death, in spite of all its uncertainty and unfamiliarity, is an achievement, a respite, a transition. All this is often expressed with the subtlest of wordplay, in the most vigorously metaphorical language, and, occasionally, with extremely vivid but generally noncarnal realizations of the beloved’s body. 

The beloved’s gender in the premodern ghazal can be a troublesome issue for readers. In Urdu a convention developed in the late seventeenth century, contrary to the convention in nearly all South Asian poetry, to talk of the beloved as a male. In this edition, the beloved’s gender is translated as female, unless the context is clearly incompatible with a female beloved, and a male beloved or God is clearly being talked about. The implications of the language of the poem are such that, by disregarding the surface differences of gender, one can often imagine the beloved to be God, or any ideal being, or a woman or a man or a boy. 

The ambiguity of the atmosphere in this poetry can permit the “sacred” interpretation as often as not. Mir is rather an exception in being more than usually involved in worldly experience, but his poetry is full of Sufi themes as well. 

Mir’s poetry abounds in bawdiness, the pain and enjoyment of life, instances of homosexuality, Sufi themes, close and wise observation of the world, and insistence on man’s dignity. His achievement, rarely equaled and never surpassed, is that many of his ghazal verses are brimming with emotional affect and, at first glance, do not seem to be saying much. An expert or close reader would, however, soon find that more has been said in the poem than is apparent on the surface. 

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Ghazals

1.

What can I tell you, and how, about the reality of love?

For those who know truth, love is God.

If your heart is stuck somewhere in love, well, all interest

in life is gone for you.

Death is the name that people use lovingly for love.

Sorry, no remedy, no regimen can have any effect at all.

The cure for the ache of love is love.

It drowned me in an ocean of pain, truly.

I had believed that love was a friend—and a good

swimmer.

There is no place empty of love.

It fills all space from the human heart to the seat of the

almighty.

You think Farhad the mountain cutter carved right

through the rocky ridge?

Well, actually it was love exerting its might, and just using

him as a smoke screen.

Oh, I do admire those who do the business of love!

The kinds of love, states of love that they have managed to

find are numberless.

Were there any who reached their purpose without love?

Love is what one longs for, love—the object of existence.

Well, Mir, one has no choice in the matter but to die for

the beautiful ones.

Do not do love. Love is a bad one, a calamity in fact.

2.

Quite often, my good man, people ask: Tell us, what is

love?

Some say it is God’s own secret while others declare it is

God.

Love’s glory is always high, but its tasks and actions are

wondrous.

It sometimes courses through the heart and the mind;

sometimes it is different—or indifferent to all.

Loving the young softwood trees of the garden of love is

tough business.

Love is a penalty and pain, really—if one doesn’t fall

unconscious breathing in the fragrance of that apple,

the rounded chin.(2)

You there! Beware of love and keep away. It causes

terrible, dire suffering.

Love is pain and grief and hardship, a bane and pest of the

spirit—a fiend in fact.

One who loves someone contrary to his temperament,

Mir, will drink bitter drafts.

And if one finds a lover who is not contrary? Loving then is

a pleasure, pure enjoyment. 

3.

The earth, according to lovers, is cold, mere dust, but it’s

where love has its dwelling place.

And the sky? It is the dust that floats around on the

highway of love.

The weak and wan Majnun is popular, and not only in the

cities.

Love commands goodwill and high regard also among the

wild dwellers in the wilderness.

How great were the people of the true path whose houses

were given over to emptiness and waste!

In a word, the city of love has always been a wasteland.(3)

To suffer sorrows mutely makes the heart’s wounds

chronic, even cancerous, and yet

the holder of the secret of love does not open his heart to

weeping.

Poor Mir, he wastes himself at the first stage of loving,

though in fact he is

a wanderer far and wide in the valley of love, which preys

on madness and hunts it down. 

4. 

Although you never do so, yet I beg you, please look at me

and look—

I long for you to turn toward me and look.

Love exposes me to hardship in such quantity and variety

that you too would cast an eye and look!

Perspiration on her face glows

like the dew on the rose, just look.

Each scratch on my forehead became a gash.

It’s the artwork of loving fingernails—just take a look.

I longed for smiling lips.

Instead I was given eyes that weep. Do you see?

It tugs at the heart, even the color has fled.

Stay here another night, until it becomes morning, and

see.(4)

The heart prepares to defy love.

A mere drop of blood, and such nerve, just see!

I am near to dying,

about to leave for a faraway place, if you would just reflect

a moment and look.

Mir, I too have any number of delightful graces.

I am worth a glance—if you would just consider and look. 

5.

Heartsick I passed through a garden yesterday.

The roses were about to say, “So, how are you?” but I

didn’t even look at them.

The morning breeze woke you from slumber.

You’re angry at me, but did I do it?

I walked straight into the edge of your sword.

So what could I do? I used my battered heart as shield.

Short sword in hand and eyes bloodred from drink:

you mischief maker, you cut such an elegantly forbidding

figure that I avoided facing you.

The dirt of the road trampled underfoot day and night

can’t compare with my state.

What more can I say, except that that was how I lived my

life?

My sharp fingernails made short work of both my heart

and liver.

It was indeed artistic, the way I nightly scratched at my

breast.

Only such as I can put those lips to work the way I did.

I made my home in her eyes in no more than a twinkling or

two of the eye.

It was like someone departing the world with unfulfilled

longings in tow.

That was how I left the street of the person who stole my

heart.

Well, yesterday I somehow managed to resist the cruel one

who thirsted for my blood.

If you’re a fair judge you’ll see it was no mean feat of valor.

Very often, ah Mir, I remember and sing her praises:

“What long hair! What a face!”

In fact, I’ve now made it my custom to repeat those words,

night and day, like a pious man telling his beads.

6.

My beloved rode out from the city and the outskirts are

thick with dust today.

Bird and beast from the bush are hers, she’ll shoot only

sharp arrows today.

How elegant her face that blazes when she’s drunk!

She drank a few cups and blossomed—springtime upon

that newly bloomed rose today.

The ocean of her loveliness swells and rises high in clash

and tumult.

Let desire’s eye roam how far it may; it is hugs and kisses

through and through, today.

Her eyes reddening, her head dizzy,

she drank and then went to bed, and is hungover in the

morning, asking for more today.

You took the trouble to come calling at a fakir’s home. So

do me a favor, and kindly sit here a while.

What do I possess but life? I offer it at your feet today.

Don’t ask how much it writhed and throbbed in my side

until twilight yesterday.

Well, by and by, somehow, my heart became somewhat

stable today.

Don’t miss out on this chance: bring your heart—most

valuable merchandise—there and nowhere else.

There’s a mighty kingdom of Hindu boys ruling in

Hindustan today. (5)

I opened my eyes wide to see and found her just like a rose branch.

She seemed absorbed in their radiant appearance, so

mixed up as she was in those colors and flowers today.

Love’s galvanism will draw Laila’s howdah where it will:

the reins of her camel are in Majnun’s hands today.

She didn’t take off in the morning the flower garland she

wore last night, Mir.

Was it because the rose’s charm stubbornly clung to her

neck like a necklace’s beads today? 

7. 

Is it the bulbul that’s in the cage, shorn of wings and

feathers? Or is it I?

Does the rose have a heart in tatters, or do I?

Does the sun rise every morning in such radiant splendor,

         or do you?

Does the morning dew have eyes suffused with tears,

or do I?

Well, if I survive, I will expose the bulbul’s boast.

In the dry season when the rose departs, will he embrace

death, or will I?

Look, here’s your sword, here the basin to receive my

head.

Here am I—does anyone else play so lightly with his life

as I?

I am wordless while you rain down sword strokes on me.

Would anyone else in the world let such things pass other

than I?

What else can I say of my ruination in my search for her?

Did the breeze ever wander homeless so much from place

to place as I?

I promptly came to know when you were trapped

somewhere,

dear heart. Who else keeps so informed a vigil over you

 as I?

I live and weep with my heart in shreds, oh Mir!

Have you ever heard of anyone else who chopped his heart

to mincemeat but I? 

8. 

Things went the way man liked, and did you see what he

did then?

He made the sky—his eternal enemy—run around like a

lackey, measuring the length and breadth of the earth!

The sky goes round and round in his service all the time.

Night came on when day ended.

The moon, the sun, clouds, the wind

roam far and away, wander crazy for him.

How much digging, how much ploughing before

things of all kinds and hues could be produced and

procured for him!

He was designated the most preferred of all.

God’s benevolence elevated his status.

How astonishing to behold his ways—

self-indulgent, self-regarding, self-opinionated.

Among the modes of prostration for giving thanks it was

best for him

to ceaselessly rub his forehead on the ground.

So what did he do? Did his stubborn temperament

let him bend his head even once if at all?

Oh my God, Mir! That handful of dirt, not worth a trifle—

where did it learn such arrogance, such contumacy? 

9. 

I came like a fakir, made a beggar’s call, departed.

Dear child, I offer a blessing: may you always be happy. I

depart.(6)

Do you remember? I declared I won’t live without you.

So I now redeem that vow. I depart.

Well, actually it wasn’t fated that I survive.

So, having received all the treatment I could, I depart.

Such causes befell in the end

that, having no choice, and with my soul burnt to ashes, I

depart.

God! What is that thing for which

I detach my heart from all other things, and depart?

I would at least cast a despairing eye on you

but you even veiled your face from me, and now you

depart.

Oh, how much I longed to set foot in your street!

So now bathed in my own blood I depart.

Catching sight of you just once, a mere glimpse, caused my

senses to reel.

You took me away from myself, and then you depart.

My forehead worn down by continual prostration—

having fulfilled my duty as a servant, I depart.

Stony idol of beauty, I adored you to the utmost,

established you as the true God in everyone’s regard, and

now I depart.

It was the way the flowers die and fall from the branch

where they were born.

I came into this garden called the world, and now I depart.

Thank God, I didn’t have to face the sorrow of my friends’

deaths.

It was I who etched my grief upon them, and now I depart.

Bound with the chains of the worry-filled practice of

making ghazals, my life passed.

And now, having raised that art to such greatness, I depart.

What should I say in reply, oh Mir, were someone to ask

me,

what did you do here in this world now that you depart? 

10.

Just look, does it rise from the heart or from the soul?

It’s something like smoke but from where does it arise?

Is it a burnt heart that lies buried in the sky?

A flame arises there at every break of dawn.

Never, never go away from the heart’s quarter.

Did anyone ever leave such an excellent dwelling place?

Every time my wailing rises up

a tumultuous clamor arises in the sky.

In whatever spot her bold and seductive eye strikes

a tumult of calamities arises.

Fiery, passionate voice: shouldn’t you look to your own

house?

There’s something, something like smoke, that arises from

your house.

You think anybody ever would let him settle down again,

the one who once rose from your doorstep?

I left someone’s street—ah, it was just the way

one leaves this world.

Love is a stone with a mighty heft, oh Mir!

Hoisting it will never be possible for a frail man like you. 

11. 

If Mir keeps on wailing so loud

how can his neighbor not lose sleep?

I who shed tears so profuse now depart this world,

a weeper for whom the clouds will weep year after year.

Dear counselor, it’s my avocation to weep often.(7)

How long will you keep washing away the tears from my

face?

Stop, tears, stop! Don’t you have eyes to see?

Will you go on flooding the world forever?

My heart raises a lament so poignant and powerful

that even the caravan’s loud bell would lose its senses

upon hearing it.(8)

Well, so be it, you can abuse my rivals as much as you like.

You’ll get like for like if you do it with me.

Mir, enough. Wipe the tears from your lashes.

How long will you keep on stringing those pearls? 

12. 

My sorrow remained as long as the breath of life remained

in me.

I grieved deeply over the loss of my heart.

Your beauty, young man, drew the world’s attention.

And a world of beauty remained even when the down

appeared upon your face.

I wept my heart out, but my tears couldn’t reach even the

hem of my tunic.

The heart, a mere drop of blood, clotted on my eyelashes.

I heard that Laila’s tent was black.

Perhaps they lamented in mourning for Majnun there? (9)

Friends, don’t be deceived by the pious man’s formal

garment, the sort donned by the hajji.

True, he was in the Kaaba but he remained a total stranger,

a person before whom the mysteries must veil

themselves.

You undid your hair and revealed your face for only a

moment,

but my heart’s purposes were upended for a whole

lifetime.

I heard vitriolic words from her lips all the time.

But the poison that dripped from her lips worked like the

elixir of life for me.

The piece of paper on which was written the full and true

 account of my weeping

remained moist for a long, long time.

Mir, the morning of hoary old age now verges upon the

evening.

Alas, you paid no mind and now but little of the day remains.

13.

My existence is like a bubble’s;

what seems to be life is rather like a mirage.

Can anyone at all express how delicate are her lips?

They’re rather like the petal of a rose.(10)

Open your heart’s eyes on that other world too.

What is found here is worth rather less than a dream.

I go to her door again and again

in a growing state of uncontrollable agitation.

The beauty mark between your brows

is rather like a selection dot between the two lines of a

verse.(11)

I spoke a few words at her door, and at once she said: this

voice

is surely like his, that home destroyer, that homeless    

fellow.

Is my heart being roasted by the fires of sorrow?

For quite some time there has been something rather like

the scent of kebabs around here.

Just look, the cloud this time billows out

somewhat like my tear-filled eyes.

Those half-opened eyes, oh Mir,

are intoxicated themselves and they go to the head like

wine.

* 

Notes

1 Also see Mir Taqi Mir, Remembrances, trans. C. M. Naim, Murty Classical Library of India (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2019). for further biographical details about Mir. Mir mi- grated to Lucknow in 1782 and was well received by all accounts, but he remained unhappy with the city. Many verses that he com- posed in Lucknow over the years reflect a clear sense of loss and loneliness and lack of appropriate patronage.

2 The apple is a common trope for the beloved’s chin.

3 “True path”: dīn. The word more often means “religion,” i.e., Islam. My translation maintains the required suggestion of generality.

4 It is apparently the lover’s face whose color has faded in disunion. But there are other possibilities, which I have tried to preserve through ambiguity: (1) The lover will make such torrid, stormy love through the night that his color will fade (due to exertion); (2) the beloved’s color will fade because of the same exhausting, stormy participation in the lovemaking; (3) the flowers that were fresh last night but have now wilted overnight; (4) it is the color of the night that fades as morning arrives; in other words, the dawn is especially beautiful here at my dwelling.

5 “Hindu” means “Indian.”

6 The text is sadā kar chale, “called and went away,” but sadā karnā has also a special meaning: “for the beggar to use the special into- nation and words used for begging.”

7 In the ghazal world, the counselor is the stock figure of the man of worldly prudence and efficiency; he is always scolding and cajoling the lover, vainly urging him to change his self-destructive ways.

8 The caravan bell is lonely and melancholy because the bell moves on with the caravan but its sound remains behind (a frequent theme in Mir).

9 Black is the color of mourning. Most Arabian tents were black anyway because they were made of felt or leather. But the speaker here implies that Laila’s tent was black because they mourned for Majnun in it.

10 The point here is that rose petal seems bluish when crushed. So do her lips when crushed with kisses.

11 Ghazals in Urdu are written generally with two lines of verse opposite each other in the same line. The reader customarily put a dot between the two lines of a verse to indicate approval, sometimes with the view of compiling a selection. 

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Mir Taqi Mir (1723-1810) was an Urdu poet of the 18th century Mughal India. He was one of the principal poets of the Delhi School of the Urdu ghazal and is remembered as one of the best poets of the Urdu language.

Shamsur Rahman Faruqi (1935-2020) was an Indian Urdu language poet, author, critic, and translator. Faruqi-saab, as he was known to his admirers, was immersed in Mir’s divan, its testimony to love, doubt, irony, torment, and the fear of mortality crafted even as the Mughal empire collapsed under the pressure of invaders from the northwest and the British East India Company.